Miss Ruby's Crown

Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks

born 1947, Washington, DC

resides Wesley Chapel, FL

Miss Ruby’s Crown

2009

hand dyed cotton, silk, netting, metallic fabric, lamé, beads, buttons, shells, found objects, cotton batting, sequins, and cording

Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks remembers the services she attended with her parents at Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, as times of worship, pride, and beauty. This quilt’s subject, Miss Ruby, modeled after Brooks’s mother, Hazel Dobbins Carter, represents the sophisticated and thoughtfully styled church woman. She wears a showstopper hat, white gloves, and purse, embodying the observation by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston that “the will to adorn is the second most notable characteristic in Negro expression. Perhaps his idea of ornament does not attempt to meet conventional standards, but it satisfies the soul of its creator.”

Handmade, abstract, and inclusive of found objects, the quilt embodies Brooks’s signature style. It also has painterly qualities, a callback to her training in painting at Howard University’s College of Fine Arts.

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.11, © 2023, Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks

We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts of Black Women Artists, 2025